


Ward

by Whedonista93



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Jon Snow is Not a Stark, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:54:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24636382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whedonista93/pseuds/Whedonista93
Summary: The first time Sansa meets Uncle Benjen's ward, she decides he needs to smile more.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 14
Kudos: 132





	Ward

Sansa is eight the first time she meets Uncle Benjen’s ward, Jon Snow. She doesn’t quite understand what a ward is, or why Uncle Benjen is raising him instead of his Mom and Dad, but she knows that Jon Snow is sad. She decides that she wants to make him smile.

Sansa is twelve and can’t help but wrinkle her nose when Jon sweeps her into his arms.

“ _What_ are you wearing?” She demands.

Jon frowns, but his eyes glint happily. “You don’t like it?”

Sansa knows life is different North of the Wall, more like life was for the settlers of old, but Jon and Uncle Benjen come to Winterfell often enough to dress like civilized people, not in a handmade patchwork fur coat, and she tells him so.

Jon pouts. “Ygritte helped me make this!”

Sansa frowns as Robb pulls Jon’s attention away, and decides she doesn’t particularly want to know who Ygritte is.

When they come back the next year, Jon climbs out of Uncle Benjen’s ancient old truck looking almost as sad as he did the first time Sansa met him. When Uncle Benjen catches her frowning at him, he gently explains that Ygritte was killed and Sansa immediately feels shame for all the ill thoughts she’d ever had of the girl. Jon’s sad expression reminds her of her childhood resolution, though, and once again, she makes it her goal to see him smile.

Sansa is nineteen and Jon is barely twenty one when rumors start flying about a Targaryen in hiding. At dinner one night, when Mother asks what Rickon learned in school that day, he asks why it matters if a dead prince’s sister is still alive or if his wife had a baby before she died. Mother carefully explains that if the prince’s wife had a baby before she died, then that baby was the rightful ruler of Westeros. Sansa notices that Father and Uncle Benjen both tense as soon as the conversation starts and continue to get more tense as it goes on. They pull Jon into Father’s study.

Sansa begs off helping clean up dinner, going so far as to bribe Arya to cover her chores, and sneaks down the hall to the tapestry that hides the door to the hallway of the secret entrance of her Father’s study. She opens the door about two inches - as far as it will go before the old hinges squeak. She barely manages to bite down her gasp at the revelation that Jon is a Targaryen, the son of the last prince and their childhood friend Lyanna. 

“Sansa, you can come out now,” her father calls.

Sansa flushes, but pushes the door open enough to step through, closing it behind her before stepping out from behind the tapestry and turns to face the room. Jon looks more lost than she’s ever seen him. She immediately forgets her embarrassment and sits beside him, so she can wrap her arms around his shoulders. He reaches up with both hands and grasps her arm like a lifeline. 

“The Targaryens have…” Father trails off

“Old fashioned notions of heirs and matches,” Uncle Benjen offers.

Father nods. “This Targaryen woman, Daenerys, she’s your aunt, Jon. If she finds out you exist… well, if she was raised on Targaryen ideals, in her mind a marriage to you would cement her claim to the throne.”

Sansa crinkles her nose. “That’s disgusting.”

Uncle Benjen laughs. “Aye, it is.”

“Which is why we would protect him from even the possibility,” Father says.

“How?” Jon asks hollowly.

“Marriage. We marry you off, under your true name, before she even knows you exist.”

Jon’s face goes blank.

“You can’t just trade him off like cattle!” Sansa protests indignantly.

Jon’s hands tighten on her arm.

Father and Uncle Benjen smile at them.

“We didn’t intend to,” Uncle Benjen says, smiling. “We don’t mean to curse him to loveless political arrangement.”

“Who, then?” Sansa demands hotly.

Father smiles, eyes twinkling. “We thought you might be amenable to the idea, lemon drop.”

Sansa’s brain freezes.

Benjen acts like he doesn’t notice and continues, “Targaryen’s care about things like bloodlines, and as archaic as it is, so does Westeros as a whole. The son of the last Targaryen heir married to a line as old as the Starks… Daenerys wouldn’t dare challenge it and the rest of Westeros would probably carry the pair of you to the damn throne on their bloody shoulders.”

Jon breaks free of her suddenly slack grip and flees from the room.

Sansa curses in a very unladylike manner, shoots a dirty look at Father and Uncle, and tears off after him, already knowing she’ll find him in the godswood.

Sure enough, she finds him in front of the heart tree. She sinks down next to him, heedless of the dirt on her skirt.

“You don’t have to, San,” Jon says so quietly, so brokenly, that she almost doesn’t hear him.

“I hated Ygritte, you know,” she blurts.

The abrupt comment makes Jon actually look at her.

She blushes fiercely, but now that she’s said it out loud, she realizes where she’s going with it and pushes on. “I hated her,” she repeats.

“You didn’t even know her.”

Sansa shakes her head. “It didn’t matter. You loved her, so I hated her. It was childish, certainly, and I felt awfully guilty about it after… after. But all the same…”

Understanding slowly dawns on Jon’s face. “San…”

She focuses intensely on her chipping nail polish.

Jon shuffles around until he’s sitting in front of her. “She had red hair.”

Sansa looks up sharply.

Jon smiles a bit sadly. “There’s not much between you that was the same, really, but the only person I’ve ever known who’s stronger than she was is you. Fire-kissed, my friend Tormund calls it. It reminded me of you. Reminded me of home.”

“Jon…”

“Aye, I loved her. I’ll not dishonor you or her by denyin’ it, but gods San… it’s _nothing_ compared to the fire in my veins when I so much as look at you.”

Sansa Stark becomes Sansa Targaryen in her mother’s dress, and she gasps at the stunning Targaryen cloak he produces. It’s a small affair, family and a few friends - people they trust, people who won’t use the truth of Jon’s identity against him. They’re not keeping it a secret anymore, but they are trying to control how fast the information spreads.

“Oi!” Tormund sweeps Sansa up in his arms, spinning her in circles.

Sansa laughs and swats at his arm. She likes the giant Wildling, despite herself.

Tormund sets her on her feet and grins. “Not too late to run away north with me,” he waggles his eyebrows and leans in close. “Us gingers gotta stick together. He’s got a small pecker, ya know.”

Sansa chokes out a laugh before she can stop herself. “Gods you’re shameless!”

Sansa screams and stumbles over her own feet, landing hard on her rear and scrambling back until her back hits a wall, when a massive black dragon lands in the courtyard on a rare sunny morning.

Jon runs across the courtyard to her, gun drawn and aimed steadily at the massive beast like it’ll do any good, and pulls her to her feet before shoving her behind him. “Are you alright, San?”

She clutches at his shirt, balling the fabric into her fists near his shoulder blades. “That’s a _dragon_.”

“Aye,” Jon agrees wryly.

A petite woman, with hair as white as the snows of the North - and really, she can’t possibly be anyone other than Daenerys Targaryen, slides off the back of the dragon, apparently not even noticing the guns pointed at herself and her dragon. “Where is he?” She screams. “Where is my nephew?”

No one so much as looks Jon and Sansa’s way.

Sansa hides her smug grin against Jon’s back. The North is loyal.

Jon huffs out a breath and takes a step forward.

Sansa jerks him back where her hands are still fisted in his shirt.

“It’ll be alright, San,” he whispers.

“I’m coming with you,” she hisses back.

“No! We don’t know what she wants yet. It might not be safe.”

“Exactly. I married you to protect you. I can’t do that if I hide in the shadows.”

“San, please.”

She rolls her eyes, despite the fact that he can’t see her. “You can let me come with you or I’ll come anyway as soon as you step too far away to stop me,” she reasons.

He closes his eyes, briefly. “Fine.”

She kisses the back of his neck, then steps out to his side, but stays slightly behind him as they step out of the shadows and into the open light of the courtyard.

The woman’s eyes narrow on them immediately. “Who approaches?”

Jon scoffs. “You’re the one who landed a massive flying beast in our courtyard. Shouldn’t we be asking the questions?”

“I’m the one with the giant flying beast,” the woman fires back.

Jon stands his ground.

Daenerys rolls her eyes - an impossible shade of violet, much like Jon’s, in the right light, Sansa notes idly - but inclines her head. “I am Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, and I seek my nephew.”

Sansa draws a shaky breath and steps forward, daring to meet Daenerys’ eyes. “What do you want with him?”

When Daenerys answers, her voice is steady, and she meets Sansa’s eyes readily. “The careless blob that sits on the throne now will drive the whole of Westeros to ruin and the little worm of a boy that would be his heir is not worthy to rule. They dishonor their people. My father was mad and cruel, this is no secret. But my brother… I was very young when he died, and I remember little of Rhaegar, but he was _good_. He was kind and strong. Rhaegar was the heir to the throne and he would have been a good king. In his absence, my nephew is the rightful heir to the throne. The people are tired of being treated cruelly. My nephew has the claim, and I have the armies, and the dragons, he shall need to take his rightful place.”

“And if he doesn’t want it?”

Daenerys shrugs. “A sure sign he will be a good king, just as surely as my own want for it tells me that I would be a horrid queen.”

Sansa clutches Jon’s hand without taking her eyes off the other woman, offering a silent reassurance and letting him know the choice is his.

Jon straightens his shoulders and raises his chin. “I was raised as Jon Snow in the far north, but I was born Aegon Targaryen, my lady, and I assure you I do not want the throne.”

Daenerys smiles and tilts her head. “But will you take it?”

Jon huffs and turns to face Sansa. 

“You would be a fine king,” she tells him, quietly enough that only he can hear.

Jon tucks his gun away as he turns back to Daenerys, steps forward and offers the and that Sansa isn’t clutching like a lifeline. “Call me Jon.”

Daenerys shakes his hand warmly. “Family call me Dany.”

Jon nods and tugs Sansa forward. “Dany, then. My wife, Sansa.”

Dany’s smile grows. “Married? Even better!” She tilts her head. “A Stark?”

Jon nods.

Dany beams. “Wonderful. People will love that. I would have brought my husband, but… well, to be frank, he frightens most people.”

Tension she hadn’t even realized she was holding bleeds out of Sansa’s frame so quickly she nearly collapses.

Jon, smooth and casual of anything, releases her hand and wraps an arm around her waist, effortlessly holding her up. “More than a dragon?”

Dany has the grace to blush. “A different manner of fright. My husband is… well, technically he’s a warlord.”

In the end, Jon assuming the throne is a rather simple matter.

DNA tests. The first, proving Jon’s heritage. The second, discrediting the heir apparent and his siblings - with the additional benefit of the queen and her brother being imprisoned for incest.

Under the implied threat of the combined force of the North, the Dothraki, and dragons, King Robert graciously abdicates. The second Targaryen dynasty makes history for being the longest period of peace in any history.


End file.
